RÉSUMÉL'objectif de cet article est de montrer comment le marqueur parenthétiquetu voiss'est pragmaticalisé au cours des siècles. Afin de déterminer s'il existe une corrélation entre l'émergence de contextes syntaxiques et l'apparition de sens nouveaux pour ce marqueur, nous avons adopté une méthode d'analyse, en diachronie, de données de corpus pseudo-orales. Après avoir mis en exergue les résultats d'analyse en termes de déplacement sémantique et de complexification syntaxique, l'article montrein fineen quoi le recours à la grammaticalisation semble insuffisant pour expliquer l'évolution des parenthétiques et propose d'inscrire ce processus dans la perspective plus large du changement linguistique.

The CorpAGEst project aims to study the pragmatic competence of very old people (75 years old and more), by looking at their use of verbal and gestural pragmatic markers in real-world settings (versus laboratory conditions). More precisely, we hypothesise that identifying multimodal pragmatic patterns in language use, as produced by older adults at the gesture–speech interface, helps to better characterise language variation and communication abilities in later life. The underlying assumption is that discourse markers (e.g., tu sais ‘you know’) and pragmatic gestures (e.g., an exaggerated opening of the eyes) are relevant indicators of stance in discourse. This paper's objective is mainly methodological. It aims to demonstrate how the pragmatic profile of older adults can be established by analysing audio and video data. After a brief theoretical introduction, we describe the annotation protocol that has been developed to explore issues in multimodal pragmatics and ageing. Lastly, first results from a corpus-based study are given, showing how multimodal approaches can tackle important aspects of communicative abilities, at the crossroads of language and ageing research in linguistics.

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The article investigates the multi-functional status of the French connective donc (‘so’) showing on the basis of a corpus analysis that the connective may be used to structure the discourse at different levels. The study distinguishes four main functions for donc: consequential, recapitulating, reformulating, and discursive. In the discourse situation, donc may acquire properly discursive functions reaching beyond its primary consequential function. This functional evolution partially parallels a loss of the specific semantico-syntactic features of consequential donc.

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